Me-time?

Me-time?

We talk about ‘me-time’ as thought it is a limited amount of time when we allow ourselves to be and enjoy being. The rest of the time we are hardly there. The mind has the capacity to keep anticipating the future and to go backwards to remember the past. If we are not aware of this we end up missing out on most of our experince in the present moment.

Consider these questions:

How much do you feel that in your everyday life you are ‘in contact’ with your own moment-by-moment experiences?

How much are you affected by the interpretations of your mind?

How much is your mind giving a running commentary on every experience you have?

How often do you mistake this commentary for the actual experience?

Being present and open to all experiences – pleasant or not

Why would you want to be present to moments of pain or sadness?Wouldn’t it be better to mentally distance yourself?

There are few reasons for staying with an experience, even if it is painful:

Long term we cannot defend against our experience. The resistance itself takes a lot of effort and creates more suffering.

Resilience cannot be built without exposure to the situations and emotions that we consider difficult. When we fight our pain it gets bigger; when we stay with it, we notice it passing.

Pain is a ntural part of life, and if we try to avoid it we miss out on our experience. Our world gets smaller as we try to stay in our comfort zone.